Mission in a gaze

Posted by Michael Carvill on 30 May 2014 ·

I never forgot the gaze of Don Giussani. I encountered it for the first time in an unexpected manner in 1985. I was living in Brussels but, during a business trip to Milan, I accepted the invitation of a few friends to go and meet him.
In those years I was a little unease with the world, unconsciously looking for a gaze completely determined by Christ. But the way Giussani was present struck me profoundly: it was the look in his eyes. It was impossible not to perceive a gaze that was completely meant for me. Being looked at in this way, I felt both poor and great at the same time: the object of a gratuitous esteem. In a flash he became the greatest friend in my life.
At a certain point in the discussion, he asked me without any hesitation: “Can you come to live in Milano?” An unimaginable invitation fifteen minutes earlier, suddenly became clearly reasonable. This meeting was exactly what I had been waiting for and it required a total response.
I did not go to Milano as he had asked. Eight months later, however, under his direction, I entered the seminary with the nascent Fraternity of St. Charles. And after all these years I look back to that gaze and see the meaning of mission.